An access router is a piece of equipment, typically located in a cable company's headend or at a hub, which can be employed to provide high speed data services, such as cable Internet and/or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to cable subscribers. In order to provide high speed data services, a cable company can connect its headend to the Internet via very high capacity data links to a network service provider. On the subscriber side of the headend, the access router enables the communication with subscribers' modems to provide network access.